SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories from the Lotus Sutra

Dogen-Zenji so cherished the Lotus Sutra that he actually carved a selection of it into his door. This, the core text of not only Zen but the whole of Mahayana Buddhism, has never lost its appeal among practitioners of the Way. Join us for our SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories From the Lotus Sutra led by Sensei Joshin Byrnes, Sensei Genzan Quennell

EDITOR'S NOTE

Happy Election Day! Don't forget to vote in your local elections.

Love is what ties the world together, Roshi Bernie Glassman says, often referencing The Big Lebowski: "That rug really tied the room together, did it not?" He shares his thoughts on interconnectedness as said rug in our mysterious, evolving universe.

In an interview with San Francisco Zen Center, Shodo Spring discusses her now-complete pilgrimage along the route of the Keystone XL Pipeline, the Compassionate Earth Walk, and the work of decolonization as that of coming home.

And Maia Duerr writes about the radical work of Ouyporn Khuankaewa, a Thai woman, uprooting the harmful view that karma underlies patriarchy and oppression, and using Buddhst tools to train activists with a vision for social justice.

May our thoughts, words, and actions knit the world together, mending the web of life.

Áine McCarthy, Editor

THIS MONTH AT UPAYA

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Dharma Talk, Daily Practice

DHARMA TALK — Wednesday, November 6, 5:30 pm

Joshin Brian Byrnes,Bodhidharma's Zen

DAILY PRACTICE

7:00 am, 12:20 pm, and 5:30 pm. Please arrive five minutes early for sitting periods and events. Park in the East parking lot (Second driveway — the one farther from town.)

Please note these changes to the regular meditation schedule:There will be no midday zazen on November 5, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16; 17. Zazen will be at 12:00 noon instead of 12:20 on November: 6-8, 10, and 12.

ROSHI JOAN: News, Teachings, Travels

Continuing her travels in Asia after the Nomads Clinic and Pilgrimage to Manaslu and co-moderating the Mind and Life meeting at the Dalai Lama's residence in Dharamsala, Roshi is now beginning an art journey in Japan with Kaz Tanahashi and Mayumi Oda. She returns to Upaya on Nov. 16.

All is very vibrant at Upaya at this time, and there is a lot of gratitude for our local sangha and residents who keep the practice stream flowing. Special thanks to our Associate to the Abbot Joshin, and Resident Coordinator Genzan. Great thanks to Jiryu, Shinzan, and Rinzan, and a fine group of residents, and Upaya's longterm staff Ellen, Maia, Natalie, Roberta, Áine, and Sue.

We are accepting applications for Upaya's resident program. Please consider joining Roshi, Visiting Teachers, and Upaya for three months or more of dedicated practice and learning. By application, click here.

Roshi as well has a number of papers she has written on compassion. If you wish to receive a copy, please write the office: upaya@upaya.org

For several new videos of interviews with Roshi Joan on Upaya's Blog, click here.

Roshi Joan started a Google+ Community and more than 1500 people have joined so far. Click here to join.

Upaya is guided by a series of remarkable Visiting Teachers. We are grateful for Sensei Robert Thomas (Nov 2013), Sensei Irene Bakker (Jul/Aug 2013), Roshi Eido Frances Carney (Sep 2013). Also, we are happy that Sensei Alan Senauke is now a Core Teacher for our Chaplaincy Training and will be a Visiting Teacher in spring, 2014. Note that Roshi Norman Fischer will be leading Upaya's Summer Ango in 2014 and Sensei Robert Thomas will be leading spring sesshin, 2014 and will be a Visiting Teacher in fall 2014.

Roshi now has five new books available for sale at Upaya: Four are photography books — "Seeing Inside," "About Face," "Original Face: Unmediated Expressions of Tibet, Nepal, Burma," and "Leaning into the Light." "Lone Mallard" is a book of her haiku. In addition, over a hundred of her remarkable photos are available to look at (and purchase) on Upaya's website:https://www.upaya.org/seeing-inside/

UPAYA'S BLOG

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Mindfulness and Difficult Emotions: Sharon Salzberg

I’ve heard some wonderful explanations of mindfulness. The writer and teacher Sylvia Boorstein calls it “awake attention to what is happening inside and outside so we can respond from a place of wisdom.” The Vietnamese Zen teacher and poet Thich Nhat Hanh says, “I like to define mindfulness as the energy that helps us to be there 100 percent. It is the energy of your true presence.” But my favorite definition comes from a fifth grader at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School in Oakland, California

It is the opinion of many scientists (including me) that about 15 billion years ago a tremendous explosion started the expansion of the universe. This explosion is known as the Big Bang. At the point of this event all of the matter and energy of space was contained at one point. What existed prior to this event is completely unknown and is a matter of pure speculation. This occurrence was not a conventional explosion but rather an event filling all of space with all of the particles of the embryonic universe rushing away from each other. The Big Bang actually consisted of an explosion of space within itself unlike an explosion of a bomb were fragments are thrown outward. The galaxies were not all clumped together, but rather the Big Bang laid the foundations for the universe.

Where’s the beginning in the big bang? You can’t know what’s there before the big bang, right? You can go down pretty damn close i mean they’re going down in nanoseconds and seeing what happens in there. And they’re going forward and stuff like that. But in the very beginning, that’s what’s called a singularity. You can’t know.

Now you may notice that in the Peacemakers, our first tenet is Not Knowing. It’s a state of not knowing, so what we say is if you’re going do something first approach it from that state of not knowing, that is get back to that initial singular point – to that point before the big bang. So if i can get back to that point of Not Knowing right now, and be there, then something happens and that’s the big bang. Now it starts unfolding. And it can unfold in a very creative way because it’s starting from this point of not knowing, this singular point. It’s starting from the beginning. Whatever you believe in it was created out of that big bang. Before that there was nothing.

Our job in Zen is to experience that beginning, that place before there’s anything. That’s what’s meant by the koan “what’s the sound of one hand” It’s before any phenomena, what’s that state? It’s not so easy to experience. But it can be done, and it has been done, and it’s being done. So we want to get to the beginning. I’ll jump to the end of this discussion, but it’s also the beginning. There’s an end point as well as that beginning point. The beginning point is singular, the end point is singular, and that end point in the Christian and Jewish world is called God. In Islam, it is Allah. In the Buddhist world it’s called Maitreya. These are different terms for similar ideas. So there’s this beginning point and end point, and in between is an evolution from the beginning point to the end point. Things are evolving. But the interesting thing about it is that this end point is creating the evolution from the beginning point. So that end point is also right here, now, in the beginning. And it’s all evolving between these two points.

A little metaphysical, but what’s fascinating about it to me is that if you go to the big bang and there’s just not knowing, or if you go to our state right now and say we can get to this place of not knowing, there’s this anything can happen. As soon as something bangs, as soon as something coalesces, as soon as two relations meet and there’s an event… As soon as anything happens, each starts evolving. And the forms, and by forms i mean not just physical forms but spiritual forms and mental forms and conscious forms and unconscious forms… All the forms evolve.

If you look at one billionth of a nanosecond after that big bang, there weren’t any of us around. There were different kinds of particles – they kept evolving, and they evolved to where we are. That means everything we’re made of including our consciousness and our spiritual being dates back to that initial point. And going forward everything that we are keeps evolving to the singular point that we call God or Allah or i call Not Knowing – just the state of not knowing. So that for me the beginning point and the end point are the same and they’re drawing our evolution.

Indra was an ancient king of India who thought a great deal of himself. One day he went to the royal architect and said that he wanted to leave a monument of himself, something that all people would appreciate. The king’s architect created an immense net, which extended throughout all space and time. And the king’s treasurer placed a bright, shining pearl at each node of the net so that every pearl was reflected in every other pearl. And each single pearl, each person, each event, contains the whole of Indra’s Net, including all of space and time.

When we realize that we are all bright pearls in Indra’s Net, we see that within each one of us the whole body of the universe is contained. Since we are all already connected in Indra’s Net, there are no limits to the possibilities of connecting with other people in our lives and our work.

Still, it’s natural for most of us to begin “networking” with the people closest to our own interests and needs. Accountants network with other accountants, poets with other poets, and social activists with other social activists. This kind of networking certainly has its uses. It’s especially effective, for example, when we need help in solving a very difficult problem. But it is not a very effective overall strategy because it leads to a narrowing instead of a widening of your network. It results in ever diminishing returns. The tax accountants end up talking only to other tax accountants; the free verse poets end up talking only to other free verse poets; and the social activists of one school end up talking only to social activists of the same school.

When we network according to the vision of Indra’s Net, on the other hand, we begin by casting the widest possible net. We do this by defining our mission in the broadest possible way...

A Long and Compassionate Walk for the Earth: Zen Priest’s Pilgrimage Nears Completion: Myoki Stewart

I do not know whether it is too late to stop the mad rush toward a hotter climate … but I will continue to walk in the other direction, away from the culture of consumption and immediate gratification, away from the culture of separation and colonization, toward a life of connection with a compassionate Earth. —Shodo Cedar Spring

Two years ago during a practice period at Tassajara, Soto Zen priest Shodo Cedar Spring began to envision a pilgrimage—a walk along the proposed route of the Keystone XL Pipeline through the heart of North America to express her deep concern for the environment (see details on the pipeline below). Shodo reports that her root teacher, Shohaku Okumura, once said (before the walk was even imagined), “It needs to be done. Someone has to do it. And I can’t help you.” She then remarked, “That is his teaching style. He says you do what you are doing, and you be you.”

Myogen Steve Stücky and Shodo Spring Myogen Steve Stücky and Shodo Spring With encouragement from San Francisco Zen Center Central Abbot Myogen Steve Stücky (then at Tassajara), she spent the next two years preparing for the journey called the Compassionate Earth Walk, which began this July and [ended in October]. Abbot Steve Stücky even joined her and her group for a few days last month.

Her courageous vision, which she refers to as a spiritual walk rather than a protest, may also happen to reflect ideas about pilgrimage held by Suzuki Roshi more than 50 years ago. One of his students, Barton Stone, embarked on a similar pilgrimage in 1960 from Union Square in San Francisco to Moscow, Russia, over concern about nuclear testing. Barton said Suzuki Roshi was “very much in favor of it … enthusiastic, even!” He recalled that later, “one day after I’d returned from the Moscow walk, Okusan [Suzuki Roshi’s wife] came to me with this newspaper clipping that showed ranks and ranks of Japanese Buddhist monks protesting nuclear weapons on Hiroshima Day in Japan. She pointed to Suzuki Roshi in the picture. She wanted me to know that he was part of that anti-nuclear march. It must have been maybe 1958 when that walk took place.”

When asked if he had any suggestions for the Compassionate Earth Walkers, Barton Stone replied, “Hold everyone that you meet with love in your heart.”

About the Pipeline and Its Effects

The Keystone project, which inspired Shodo to take action, would bring synthetic crude oil extracted from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, and the northern United States to refineries on the Texas coast. Proponents of the pipeline say it is safe, economically beneficial and necessary for industry. Among the top concerns of those opposed are the devastating effects of the extraction process on the surrounding land and people, and how the route cuts through wilderness, farmland, and even a major aquifer, carrying highly corrosive material.

To begin, the walkers joined the Tar Sands Healing Walk in Alberta, crossed the border into Montana and have continued through South Dakota to Nebraska, where the Ogallala Aquifer is located. The significance of both the start and end points cannot be overstressed, considering these facts:

The tar sands extraction process produces “three to four times more carbon emissions per barrel than conventional oil.” (The Guardian, May 2013).

The Ogallala Aquifer is one of the largest underground water tables in the world (174,000 sq. miles), and at least 27% of all irrigated land in the United States relies on water from the Ogallala.

The aquifer provides drinking water for 82% of the population living in the High Plains region (Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and parts of Texas).

The material (called dilbit) that would pass through the proposed 10,000 miles of pipeline is not recognized by the US government as being different from regular oil; however, dilbit is much more toxic and difficult to clean up. Furthermore, shipments of dilbit are tax exempt based on a Congressional decision from 1980 before the environmental impact of oil from sand could be fully understood.

When Shodo drove the route last year as part of her preparation, she met with many groups along the way. She was struck by the devastating impact the tar sands have had not only on the land but also on its people. She met First People who had moved away for school and returned. It was as if they “had left a dreamland filled with medicinal plants and bird songs, and came back to basically a nightmare. The tar sands are like if you take the ugliest paved strip mine and you add a lot of nasty smells to it. Traditional livelihoods are ruined, and people have to work in the tar sands or on the pipeline to survive.”

She also reported that illnesses have resulted. In one village downstream from the tar sands, Fort Chynwhyn, the people are developing strange cancers. The deer and fish are also exhibiting huge cancerous growths, so the Native people can no longer hunt their food. There are also incidents of locals walking along the roads and being killed by the large tar sands trucks.

About Walking

Shodo began walking this July, her small band of activist companions have included a retired engineer from Portland, the Director of The Ojai Foundation and a contingent from Pick Up America (an organization that spent three years picking up trash across the country). Collectively the walkers are covering an average of 20 miles per day in two groups. They have a vegetable-oil-fueled bus that serves as both transportation and housing. And as traditional monks do, Shodo and her sangha rely solely on the generosity of others to fund the trip and to feed them. In each town, they connect with a local church or activist organization and hopefully receive a hot meal and some sandwiches for the following day.

The daily schedule reads like a monastic practice, with participants invited to wake at 5 a.m., with a period of meditation and encouragement to walk in silence each morning. Kinhin is much more rigorous than the 10 minutes to which most North American monks are accustomed, though—Shodo’s walking 10 miles a day!

All were thrilled when Abbot Steve Stücky joined the walk in South Dakota in early September. He offered some reflections on that trip:

I felt Shodo’s dedication and wanted to support her effort to bring a strong public focus to the tar sands and the pipeline in order to nourish seeds of awareness. I appreciate the focus on compassion as the basis for active engagement. Lately, I’ve been quoting Dogen, who quoted a Zen ancestor’s words: “The entire earth is the true human body.” Carefully attending to our true body implies that we observe how our activity as a species impacts the whole earth body. And it means that we naturally want to practice restraint … we need to understand that supporting a healthy body means that we leave much carbon (oil, coal, etc) in the ground, that we walk lightly as individuals, and that we collectively create policies to protect what we hold in common from our own greedy careless human tendencies.

I was able to join the Compassionate Earth Walk for four footsore happy days mindfully walking the bright, windy, vast rangeland in South Dakota. We passed the (Jizo) bodhisattva staff from team to team and entered into dialog with local residents along the way. Some ranchers were very hospitable and shared concerns, opinions, food and fellowship, along with many questions. The walkers are each experiencing this as a life-changing pilgrimage and are peacefully inviting serious self-inquiry and inspiring many others along the way. Please support them and find your own way to take compassionate action!

An Interview with Shodo

From her perspective on the ground, Shodo responded to a few questions from me, summing up some of her thoughts about the difficult realities of the situation:

Myoki: Are you afraid or feel the walk is dangerous?

Shodo: There are people out there who think we don’t care about them; that we are the outsiders coming in. They want to have jobs and they want to eat, and they’ve been told the pipeline will bring them money. The people who live along the proposed pipeline route—the ranchers and farmers who are against the pipeline—are pretty lonely because they are the minority. One woman from Nebraska said she’d only walk with me if we have security. And meanwhile, the police are getting training from TransCanada on how to deal with the “ecoterrorists.” We are being careful and will not go onto private property, but stay along public roads.

Myoki: If you could have five minutes with President Obama, what would you say?

Shodo: I would say, what are they (Big Oil and Gas) doing to make you do the opposite of what you seem to believe? You have a choice of life on the planet in the future or watching everybody—including your own kids—go through starvation, drought, floods, storms, famine, disease. It’s not like stopping the Keystone will guarantee that we don’t do those things, but allowing it to go forward—it’s almost the nail in the coffin….

Myoki: On your website you say one of the intentions of the Compassionate Earth Walk is to walk away from separation and colonization. Obviously, you consider both the tar sands and the pipeline acts of colonization, but will you say something more about your intention?

Shodo: We have been living in a kind of machine culture—somewhat disconnected from the earth and each other. We humans are always orienting somewhere else. We don’t think we are part of it. Decolonization is about becoming part of it and realizing everything is interconnected. In order for humans to survive, people have to begin to at least understand the obvious physical level of interconnection: that in fact there are consequences to our actions and that the Earth is always taking care of us. It’s still taking care of us as well as it can. I don’t take that personally … it’s just the way the world works. Decolonization is about coming home.

Can Religion Be a Force for Transformation?: Maia Duerr

Growing up with an abusive father, Ouyporn Khuankaew learned a distorted version of the Buddhist teaching on karma: her mother had done something in a past life to deserve the violence. Now, as a radical feminist lesbian, she teaches activists that Buddhism can be a way to fight oppression.

As a young girl growing up in a rural village near Chiang Mai, Thailand, in the 1960s, Ouyporn Khuankaew lived in fear of her father 's physical and emotional abuse toward her mother and her siblings. She would listen with fear and worry, late into the night, as it was often a time when he threatened to hurt them or destroy the house.

Khuankaew’s story is not unique – Thailand is ranked second worst among 49 countries for domestic violence – but what is unusual is how she transformed the traumatic experience of her childhood into a lifetime devoted to fighting for justice and equality.

Like many other Thai girls, Khuankaew was taught that a woman could not be happy unless she was beautiful, got married, and had children. She grew up with the message that the domestic violence in her family was happening because of a distorted version of the Buddhist teaching on karma: she, her sisters, or her mother must have done something in a past life that merited this terrible consequence.

This belief is pervasive in Thai society, and contributes to the fact that more than 60 per cent of the population thinks that it’s acceptable for a husband to beat his wife. Seven out of every ten women in rural Thailand believe that there are reasons that justify this behavior.

Even as a child, Khuankaew knew that something wasn’t right with this belief. She vowed to do whatever she could to prevent other women from going through the suffering that her own mother had experienced.

Now, fifty years later, Khuankaew is a self-identified radical feminist lesbian – and a devout Buddhist. In 2002, she co-founded the International Women’s Partnership for Peace in Justice or IWP, where she and her colleagues teach Asian activists about structural oppression and how it can be addressed. In this intensely Buddhist country, IWP training courses remind both men and women that the Buddha’s teachings were not intended to justify patriarchy, violence, and abuse, but rather to serve as a vehicle for liberation - both personal and political. In addition to lectures and group discussions, the courses include yoga and meditation, and teachers stress the importance of self-care as an essential part of activism.

In the summer of 2013, Khuankaew and Ginger Norwood, co-founder of IWP, launched the Buddhist Education for Social Transformation program (better known as BEST). Sixteen women from Asia and North America came together for a year-long training course to explore how religion and spirituality can be a force for transformation rather than oppression. The BEST program is based on three foundations - non-violent activism, spiritual practice, and anti-oppression feminism - that combine to show how personal transformation and structural change are interwoven with one another.

Khuankaew’s work is lonely at times. She told me that over the last twenty years very few women in Thailand have addressed oppression from a religious perspective. “Most of the feminists in Thailand are not interested in Buddhism, spirituality, or karma,” she said. “But religion impacts women’s lives - culture and religion work together,” so combating injustice has to involve an examination of the role that religion plays in Thai society.

Buddhist institutions in Thailand like temples and monasteries have consolidated power and privilege in the hands of men for centuries. All boys in Thailand are given the opportunity to ordain as Buddhist monks for a period of time, and receive free education and other social benefits in return.

By contrast, girls have few options and are raised to accept their secondary status in life. Thai Buddhist nuns (called mae chi) cook and clean for the monks but they are not financially supported by their monasteries. Women in Thailand have few other life choices, and often end up as maids, factory workers, or sex workers. Those who have resources and determination try to break this cycle by improving their education.

One of Khuankaew’s closest colleagues is Ven. Dhammananda, who became the first Thai woman to receive full ordination as a bhikkhuni (or Theravada nun) in 2003. She had to travel to Sri Lanka for this purpose, since at that time the Thai Buddhist Sangha forbade women from being ordained. Khuankaew and Dhammananda are working to create spaces where Asian women can come together to study the original teachings of the Buddha, which emphasize that enlightenment is available to everyone, regardless of their gender. Dhammananda is the founder and Abbess of Wat Songdhammakalyani, a Buddhist temple for women near Bangkok, where she is reestablishing the Theravāda lineage in Thailand so that women can become fully-ordained bhikkhunis. She also serves on the core faculty of BEST.

While most of the women in the training program are Buddhists, the group also includes a Catholic nun and a Muslim woman, both from Sri Lanka. Sister Canice Fernando, the nun, is a counseling psychologist and a retired convent school principal who has long been involved in peace and reconciliation work in Sri Lanka. For the last four years she has helped to staff a summer camp which brings together more than 200 young women from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, including Sinhalese, Tamil, Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu.

“We give them a meeting place where they can come to know each other,” she told me, “so the program is designed in such a way that they recognize their differences and begin to discover their similarities, or who they are as human beings.” Some of the participants are widows of Sinhalese and Tamil soldiers. “When we brought the widows together for the first time, they looked at each other as enemies. But when they started relating their stories, they began to see that there was solidarity in suffering.”

When I asked Fernando what she took home from the BEST training course this was her answer: “The analysis of power structures is not new to me, because I have studied that in liberation theology from Catholicism. We also talk of nonviolence, but in Buddhism the nonviolent path becomes clearer. Even working with the government or the so-called oppressors, I have started to reflect on other methods of approaching these people. That is something that I got from this course. Listening to Ouyporn, I reflected on how a violent way of doing things begets violence, and I want to start approaching people in a different way.”

This work highlights religion as a powerful, double-edged sword in society. It can inspire people to act for the common good, and it can be high-jacked by those in power to justify oppression. “Reconciliation does not mean forgetting and forgiving,” Fernando told me, “but rather remembering and transforming.”

Her words could well apply to the way that Ouyporn Khuankaew has taken the abusive and violent memories of her childhood and transformed them into a strong commitment to the liberation of all people.

These talks, given by extraordinary Buddhist teachers such as Roshi Joan Halifax, Sharon Salzberg, Bernie Glassman, and many more, are offered to support your practice even if you live far away from Upaya.

Apps Available Now: Did you know you can have Upaya's dharma talks delivered directly to your mobile phone or MP3 player? iPhone and iPod users, just use iTunes to subscribe to our free podcast here.

Upaya's Nepal Nomads Clinic: Compassion in the Mountains

Please consider giving to The Tsering Paljor Memorial Fund

This Fund is a memorial for Tsering, a beloved medical translator for the Nomad's Clinic. Tsering was a force of joy and a great hero to all of our community. He gave his life to save another on our journey in the Manaslu region. Donations to the Fund will be used to express deep gratitude to Tsering's family for their sacrifice.

If you wish to donate, please do so in the way that feels best. You can do this easily here. Please note that our online system is not set up to accept international donations at this time. If you live outside the U.S. or Canada, you may make a gift by using PayPal or by contacting our office at registrar@upaya.org.

The Nomads Clinic led by Roshi Joan Halifax, Tenzin Norbu, and Carroll Dunham group carried hundreds of Little Sun solar lamps to the Nubri and Tsum areas, to provide light for women and girls in the deep winter months. The Little Sun Project is "an innovative way to get clean, affordable light to the 1.6 billion people worldwide without access to the electrical grid." Learn more about the global project Little Sun.

Every year (since the early eighties), Roshi Joan goes with clinicians and friends to the Himalayas with the Nomads Clinic. We invite you to join us in supporting this wonderful work. And great thanks to Chas Curtis, Cira Crowell, and Canton Becker for putting together this wonderful website!:http://nomadsclinic.org/

Santa Fe Sangha Events

THURSDAYS (most), 9:20 am: Weekly Seminar, Upaya House living room — open to the public. Topic is usually related to the dharma talk of the evening before. To confirm that the seminar is happening that morning, please email temple@upaya.org.

Saturday, November 16, 5:30 pm: Fusatsu Full Moon Ceremony A traditional Buddhist ceremony of atonement, purification, and renewing of the precepts. Upaya holds Fusatsu every month, usually on the day of the full moon. Please join us in the temple for this beautiful ceremony.

SUNDAY, November 24, 3 pm, Meditation Instruction Upaya's Temple Coordinator Shinzan Palma offers instruction on meditation and temple etiquette for those who are new to meditation and practice at Upaya. There is no fee, but registration is recommended. Please contact Shinzan at temple@upaya.org or 505-986-8518 x21.

SUNDAY, November 24, Upaya House, 6:30 pm, Dharma Discussion Group Please join Upaya’s Local Sangha as we continue our study of the paramitas, or “practices of perfection.” The paramita we are studying in November is Concentration, or Contemplation. The group meets informally from 6:30-7 pm at Upaya House with tea and cookies, with the formal program running from 7- 8:30 pm. We encourage starting by joining the residents for the 5:30 zazen practice. All are welcome as we discuss, explore and further our practice.

Calgary, AB, Canada: Calgary Contemplative End of Life Care Practice Group. For professionals and volunteers working with people who are dying. Second Monday each month at Hospice Calgary's Sage Center, 6:30 – 8:30 pm. Sit starts at 7 pm. For further information, contact laurie.lemieux@hospicecalgary.com

NEW: Westbury, Wiltshire, U.K. This new group will hold its first meeting on Sunday, October 27th from 3-5 pm at The East Wing, 35 Church Street, Westbury, Wiltshire. For more info, e-mail Jan Mojsa, janmojsa@googlemail.com.